Gator8NE’s post #138 and the earlier posts cited there reflect the fundamental paradox of academic hiring at the Assistant Professor level, by research universities. Despite typical applicant numbers in the 200’s for a single position (or even higher, some places), a large number of universities are chasing the same few applicants that they view as the “top” people on the market. “Having a hard time hiring” at the Assistant Professor level means that the applicants to whom the department is making offers are going to a peer institution instead . . . and then usually due to hiring-season constraints, the department hires no one that year, and decides to look again the next year.
I believe that Wisconsin has departments that are ranked in the top 10 nationally, and probably a few in the top 5; but this is not true of all of their departments. There are probably a number of UW departments that are in the 20-to-30ish range. If one of these departments keeps losing in the bidding war on a starting Assistant Professor, and the people who turn down the offer are all going to top 5 schools, the department needs to re-think its strategy of applicant evaluation. They are not really “having a hard time hiring.” On the other hand, if a department that is strong, but not in the top 5 or 10, keeps losing the same type of bidding war, but the people who turn down the offer are going to universities of more-or-less the same level (or worse, worse), then the Department is “having a hard time hiring.”
One could look at the cv’s of faculty in a department of interest, and see when the most recent hires started at UW to see what applies for that department.
I have commented on the prof that is going to Temple here several times. All I can say is thank god. She is a nutcase. Few in her dept or at UW speak to her. I doubt they made her a counter to stay. She was censured by the faculty last year. Good riddance.
UW has lost a few people to other state flagship Us for decades. It’s cold
^Why don’t you tell everyone how much they had to pay to lure RW? You crowed when they hired him, but when you add up what the Business School and College of Letters and Sciences is paying, it will shock the average CC reader. In fact, they are paying him so much that he can’t leave (even though he wants to). That is why the numbers you quote are meaningless.
For those who are interested in the salaries, here is a link: http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/dataondemand/university-of-wisconsin-payroll-2013-233386901.html#!/totalpay.desc.1/ You can see that they were paying that one economics professor $487,814.35 in 2013. (His appointment is joint with the business school, which is a common ploy to get additional sources of money.) In order to judge the competitive health of a university, you need to look at many measures including which recruiting battles they win and which they lose, and how much they have to pay to win those recruiting battles.
Keep in mind that the market for business school Profs or ones with joint appointments with the business school…especially topflight ones are such that their pay across the board tends to be on the much higher side.
If they offered the same salaries offered to Profs whose appointments are solely in other divisions with less optimal faculty markets, business school Profs…especially the best ones have the option of going to business schools with often better offers or working for usually far greater salaries in the private industry.
In short, his salary is heavily influenced by not only the business faculty market, but also the job market for someone with business/topflight econ PhD/MBAs.
“, at our high school, the one sweatshirt or Tshirt you almost never see is from Illinois. You see lots of Big 10, ND, Missou and Alabama gear, but nothing for UIUC, even from kids whose parents went there. We send more than 50 kids there a year, and they are not enthused about the school whatsoever.”
Are those of you saying that there is no enthusiasm for UIUC all coming from affluent suburban North Shore or similar districts? I would be mighty careful about extrapolating New Trier et al to Chicagoland as a whole.
In northwest suburbs, District 211, Barrington HS district (don’t remember what district they’re in) - Palatine, Hoffman, Schaumburg, etc. - lots of UIUC sweatshirts and bumper stickers.
I am just reporting what I see in my own school district. Looking over the Naviance numbers, we had more students accepted to Indiana University at Bloomington than at UIUC in the past four years. It is mind-boggling that an out of state school has more acceptances than the equivalent in-state flagship, and speaks volumes about the perception of UIUC.
@Zinhead >>>>>> “We send more than 50 kids there a year, and they are not enthused about the school whatsoever.” You are seriously speaking on behalf of 50 high school kids? Not one of them is enthused even a little? Also, in post #148 are you talking about accepted to or attending each of these schools and what is the yield for both?
Don’t use your experience to extrapolate for all suburban kids. From another Chicago suburb with well-regarded schools. According to Naviance, the number of kids admitted to UIUC vs. IU over the past 3 years has been about 10% higher while the number of kids choosing to attend UIUC over IU is about 70% to 80% higher every year. So the yield % and number of attendees at UIUC from our high school is significantly higher than that for IU ever year. Plenty of UIUC wear now and likely even more in the future with Lovie Smith leading the footballl team.
And the dollars aren’t that different for most of the top kids choosing between UIUC and IU so I would say yield is a pretty good indicator.
Re the Board of Regents commentary posted by Zinhead in #144. For a young person who is going into an academic career, it is well worth understanding whether tenure resides in a department, or in the university as a whole. My university went through fairly severe financial circumstances quite a long time ago. Departments were closed at that time. However, we had the policy that tenure resided in the university, and not in a specific department, so all of the faculty members from the departments that were closing had continuing appointments, in related departments. If a young person is going into mathematics, she/he can pretty much count on that department never closing. Some other departments have a more tenuous existence, though, especially in the liberal arts–e.g., religion, linguistics, foreign languages with few majors. All of these are extremely valuable fields, but if a faculty member can be let go when the department is closing, a faculty offer is substantially worse than it looks at first glance.
My LAC had a similar idea regarding tenure which was put into practice several years before I arrived on campus when the communications department was closed due to lack of student interest/enrollment.
All the tenured Profs in that department ended up in various departments ranging from English lit to not-so-related CS. And no, I never took a CS course from the Prof who was formerly a member of the closed comm department as most of his courses were geared for non-majors…especially those who had little/no previous meaningful exposure* to computers.
Keep in mind I attended college in an era when not every HS offered computer classes and computers/internet were only starting to become popularized in the general consumer marketplace beyond professionals and academics for whom computers were a daily part of their lives.
We’re not talking about your LAC though. We’re talking about UW and now UIUC and perceptions in the greater Chicagoland area. Is that where you are from? I do suspect we have some North Shore families represented here who are indeed extrapolating their “ew, yuck, UIUC has no appeal” to the entire Chicagoland area. I am not on the North Shore, though in a well-regarded Chicagoland school district, and UIUC has plenty of appeal. Sure, no one thinks Champaign-Urbana is THE hot spot, but there’s plenty of enthusiasm for UIUC. BeeDAre says the same for the northwest suburbs.
UIUC has had a lot of Nobel laureates, and many more members of the National Academy of Sciences, and presumably also of the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . . . It is a distinguished university.
One measure of “appeal and excitement” could be yield rates.
UIUC: 33%
UW-Madison:43%
Indiana U: 28%
University of Alabama: 40%
OOS/Foreign applicants/accepted students tend to drive down yield rates:
UIUC: 12% OOS, 17% Foreign Country total of 29%
UW-Madison: 35% OOS, 6% Foreign Country total of 41%
Indiana U: 34% OOS, 8% foreign country total of 42%
University of Alabama: 62% OOS, 1% Foreign
It doesn’t look like UIUC has the same appeal as the other schools listed. It’s OOS/Foreign % is lower than the other schools, but it’s yield is much lowers than UW-Madison. I threw in UA because of the high % of OOS. Affordability also plays a role (as it does at UA), so low yield rates could also be due to relatively higher cost (like UIUC’s in-state cost).
I was concurring with Quantmech about how eliminating departments doesn’t necessarily mean colleges eliminate the tenured Profs’ jobs. Especially the senior ones because tenure is with the institution…not the department.
One unfortunate unintended consequence is that when a department is closed, some of those tenured Profs may end up being placed in departments a bit removed from the field of their former department…such as a senior former comm Prof who ended up in the CS department after my college closed the comm department down.
@Pizzagirl Why would the North Shore kids be more “ew, yuck, UIUC has no appeal” than another well-regarded Chicagoland school district? I don’t doubt this to be the case, just curious. I thought at first it would be because the high-stats kids on the North Shore see they have many other (equal or cheaper) options, but there probably would be plenty of high-stats kids in a well-regarded Chicagoland school district as well. Are NS kids simply more likely to be prestige-hounds (although UW and UI are not considered more prestigious than UIUC by most).
@2muchquan “Why would the North Shore kids be more “ew, yuck, UIUC has no appeal” than another well-regarded Chicagoland school district? I don’t doubt this to be the case, just curious.”
Maybe because students on the North Shore live closer to Madison than they do to Urbana Champaign? I agree that I see Wisconsin and Illinois as equivalently prestigious, at least academically. Wisconsin probably has a stronger sports culture though.
There’s more general brand name consciousness on the North Shore compared to other areas of Chicagoland, even other well to do areas in the NW, W or S suburbs. I don’t think this is new news.
Hmmm, still not buying it. North Shore kids going to UWisc over UIUC is due to superior “brand name”? I guess it could be…I can’t really explain it. I would think most kids in well-regarded school systems in Chicagoland would have similar perceptions and outcomes…depending on how far out ‘Chicagoland’ goes.